Who’s right, who’s wrong

Was the Pakistani boat targeted by Coast Guards on New Year eve carrying terrorists?

By Faraz Ahmad

The contradictions and disagreements in the Narendra Modi led NDA, nee BJP government have started showing a bit too soon and how?

While Praveen Swami in The Indian Express says the Coast Guard merely sunk a Pakistani smuggler’s dhow, the Defence ministry is insistent that this was one more terror attempt foiled effectively by the Indian Navy/Coast Guards. And Praveen Swami is no anti-national secularist. He is the one who while in The Hindu first pronounced Ishrat Jehan a terrorist and still maintains this. On the strength of the IB, R&AW et al Praveen has supposedly unravelled so many terror tales which only he or the man on the spot could vouch for. Anyone following Praveen Swami’s successive stories in The Hindu can easily conclude that Swami enjoys the rare confidence of the Indian intelligence establishment at the highest level, or shall I say a direct hotline to the National Security Adviser, who incidentally happens to be the eyes and ears of the Prime Minister.

So on the one hand we have Swami, on the strength of the highest intelligence “sources” insisting that Coast Guards made a hash of it, on the other, the Indian Navy announced the same day cancellation of inauguration by Prime Minister Modi of its base INS Dwarka II at Probandar scheduled for January 12 in the wake of the Pakistani boat explosion off Gujarat coast. Another report in The Times of India discloses that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has been sitting with the top brass of the Defence establishment to counter possible terror attack from Pakistan.

That’s not all, when the Congress party pointed out the obvious anomaly that stupid English speaking Odiya Bhajap spokesman, what’s his name Sambit Patra? Immediately dubbed Congress anti-national, not bothering to explain the obvious discrepancy in the two versions put out by one Government.

All those ten years of UPA rule Arun Jaitley mocked the Congress party and the UPA government of speaking in two voices and lacking clarity on any issue. It did actually happen towards the end of UPA II. But here its just six months and Modi’s government is speaking in several voices, Ajit Doval, Rajnath Singh, Ravi Shankar Prasad and now we have Manohar Parrikar from Goa to add to the cacophony. Who do we believe? Hail Modi!!!